OpenMoko offline reader puts Wikipedia in your pocket

OpenMoko has launched a new product called WikiReader, a mobile touchscreen …

OpenMoko has launched a new product called WikiReader, a small mobile device that stores over 3 million Wikipedia entries. Users can browse Wikipedia offline on its touchscreen display. The WikiReader will also empower its owner to use the best geek pick-up line ever: "I have the sum total of human knowledge in my pants. Do you want to see it?"

OpenMoko, which was spun off of FIC in 2007, aimed to build open source smartphone devices. Although OpenMoko's phone products have attracted interest from Linux enthusiasts, the company suffered serious setbacks and failed to overcome a number of significant technical and philosophical problems. OpenMoko halted development of its third smartphone, codenamed GTA03, in April following budget cuts that were necessitated by the economic downturn. Some of the features that were initially planned for GTA03, such as 3G support, were prohibitively expensive and could not be implemented with fully open drivers.

OpenMoko's prospects for survival looked somewhat bleak after the cancellation of the third device, but CEO Sean Moss-Pultz had a plan for recovery. In April, he hinted that the company was exploring opportunities for an alternate product that would be more viable and less ambitious than the failed smartphone plan. At the time, he referred to it as "Project B" and provided no specific details other than the fact that it wouldn't be a phone. WikiReader, which was announced Tuesday on the OpenMoko mailing list, is apparently the realization of Project B.

"WikiReader takes our original ideas of openness and accessibility to an even greater realm. WikiReader is so amazingly simple. There really is no interface," wrote Moss-Pultz. "You turn it on and instantly become immersed in the rich world of reading specific topics or the serendipitous pleasure of discovering something by chance. It's perfect for all ages."

The device, which is priced at $99, is powered by AAA batteries and has a capacitive touchscreen. The exact dimensions and technical specs are not yet available, but Moss-Pultz says that additional details will be announced in a few days. The product's website claims that the screen is readable under direct sunlight and that the device's power requirements are so low that the batteries will last for roughly 12 months of normal usage. Users can search for a desired entry by typing on an onscreen keyboard and can click links to navigate between entries.

The Wikipedia content, which will consist of a selection of 3 million articles, is stored on a removable 4GB micro-SD card. The device itself has no connectivity, so it will not be possible to update it directly over the air. Users will, however, be able to download updated content and manually install it on the card using a regular computer. OpenMoko also offers a subscription service and will mail updated memory cards twice a year for $29.

Those of us with modern Web-enabled smartphones can already access Wikipedia from anywhere, but the WikiReader product could potentially be useful to people who don't have constant connectivity. The removable data storage medium suggests that we might eventually see third-party content modules emerge with other material, hypothetically allowing the device to be used as an electronic bible or dictionary, for example. If it inherits OpenMoko's standard commitment to openness, it's also likely that independent developers will find innovative ways to repurpose it.

Although the WikiReader is an intriguing and clever concept, there are some limitations that might make it a less-than-ideal window into Wikipedia. When I read a Wikipedia article, I often glance at the discussion and history pages to get a better feel for the article's status and level of credibility. The ability to look at change deltas and see how an article has evolved is sometimes more instructive than the article itself. WikiReader doesn't expose these aspects of Wikipedia. Even more fundamental, it's unclear if WikiReader will be able to display the images that are embedded in Wikipedia articles.

With a sturdy design and manageable $99 price, the WikiReader could be a good back-to-school gift for young students. It also seems like it would be an amusing toy for long airplane flights and other situations where mobile connectivity is limited.

41 Reader Comments

$100?! I wouldn't pay more than $20 for this VERY niche device. But if others buy this device, than I hope part of the revenue goes to supporting Wikipedia. Than the $100 price tag doesn't seem so bad.

$100?! I would gladly pay more than $200 for this VERY spiffy device! But if others don't pay that much, then I hope that the company invests that money in making it better and better. With a 12 month battery life, that $100 price tag doesn't seem so bad.

Lol. More seriously, this does seem like an amusing toy. My question was, a "selection" of articles doesn't sound so great, I want the whole shebang. 8 and 16gig flash cards aren't expensive, I wonder how large Wikipedia actually is.

EDIT- $100 upfront and (potentially) no additional costs is a hell of a lot cheaper than a smartphone (over your 2-year contract). Don't get me wrong, I'm in the smartphone camp, but for people that are still perfectly happy with free basic cell phones, this could be great.

I've seen worse things to do with your money. However with no internet connection to automatically update the articles it essentially fails at the thing that Wikipedia is known for. This might as well be put out by Encyclopedia Britannica, at least then you known the static articles have been vetted by the time they are released. I'm also wondering how they chose the "Selection" of articles.

Originally posted by Glenn:Lol. More seriously, this does seem like an amusing toy. My question was, a "selection" of articles doesn't sound so great, I want the whole shebang. 8 and 16gig flash cards aren't expensive, I wonder how large Wikipedia actually is.

That's what I'm wondering as well; i.e. how much is it missing? It would be interesting whether the selection is predetermined, or if you can select subsets yourself- like all history articles, chemistry articles, etc.

There's a LOT of kruft in wikipedia. If you count all the user-comment pages and the such you're talking several hundred GBs when uncompressed. I keep my own local copy of wikipedia (hey, you never know when the internet might die), and purposly leave out all the extra stuff. 3 million articles really is a lot unless you're looking for very specific info. The lack of images is kind of a bummer for such a device though. Many of the articles rely heavily on visual info.

I wonder how it does for general latex/mathml formatted math articles.

Local copies of both Wikipedia and Google Maps would allow me to know everything and go everywhere. That would be awesome. Although I'm guessing that a local copy of even Google Maps' North America data would be obscenely large, compared to Wikipedia's text/images.

Unless it can be hacked to work with e-books (since most books I read don't have pictures :-)? 12-month battery life is AMAZING. Of course, one does have to ask about the expected duty cycle for such a lifespan..

I'd pay $100 if it could (statically) display general web content that was downloaded ahead of time, and/or e-books and had a decent screen, etc.

Right now, my $299 e-machines 15.6" laptop is the most "portable" thing I have other than my Meizu video player which is too small for any reading.

Wikipedia FAQ says the database was 1.2TB in August 2006 (surprisingly, it hasn't been updated in a while). I didn't see a breakdown of text vs. media (video, pictures), but there are enough articles where the image is intrinsic to the article that I wouldn't want to exclude them.

If anyone has better information, I'd be interested in knowing how big a "Text" only full Wiki is (exclude comments, version history, etc -- basically a bare bones encyclopedia).

For stats, see the "Tom's Guide" link posted earlier. Wikipedia is 25-30 GB in .xml (just the text). It's compressed to under 4GB for the OpenMoko (or that's what they claim), so apparently you get the FULL wikipedia, just no images, etc.

"Those of us with modern Web-enabled smartphones can already access Wikipedia from anywhere"

And those of us with smartphones and a $10-$30 offline reader program can already access Wikipedia from everywhere, including places without wireless data connectivity. The 2005 scrape was only 1GB compressed (no images, no talk or discussion, no revision history) - an eminently manageable size.

For me, having Wikipedia available everywhere is really useful - you can check anything, anywhere, without waiting for downloading or worrying about signal. Subways, airplanes, trips into the jungle, post nuclear holocaust bomb shelter vault. It's pretty much the killer app for smartphones for me (though - disclaimer - I am a trivia and quiz nerd)

Although I'm guessing that a local copy of even Google Maps' North America data would be obscenely large, compared to Wikipedia's text/images.

Actually it really isn't, not if you just want the mapping data and not the aerial photography. The complete North America street map dataset for my Garmin GPS comes on a single DVD. And that's including the complete searchable business directory for finding things, as well as all the road and address data.

The trick is, you don't have to store the maps as images. You just have to store the coordinates of things (as floating point lat/lon) and you can render all the map data on the fly. There's only maybe ~3 million businesses max in the US (one per hundred people, order of magnitude), and address data is repetitive enough to compress well.

Actually it really isn't, not if you just want the mapping data and not the aerial photography. The complete North America street map dataset for my Garmin GPS comes on a single DVD.

The mapping data for my copy of MS Streets & Trips 2009 fits on the same DVD, so I know that the maps themselves aren't huge. I was referring to the satellite/aerial photography as well, though, which has got to be several terabytes in size.

Although, given the small size of the Wikipedia scrapes, I now find myself wondering where I might acquire one. Just in case.

The reputation for Wikipedia's unreliability is based on biographies of celebrities, something that has been addressed recently. It amazes me that apparently these are the only articles that most people seem to look up most of the time, and they judge the entire site on those celebrity articles. It also amazes me that people think traditional encyclopedias are more reliable, or have ever been. Its very naive to think established peer-reviewed publications don't have bias or mistakes. Despite my opinions on Wikipedia's good overall quality, I'd rather have 4gigs of Project Gutenberg ebooks.

I just think it's funny to note that 10 years ago I would have given almost anything for an encyclopedia in your pocket that can be periodically updated. The fact that we are so connected these days that such a device draws a "meh" shows how far technology is advancing..

In Australia's dodgy internet space such a device could have a rosy future. I can't get decent 3G access and my carrier charges a prenium if I use someone else's network for browsing. Not to mention the times where the whole 3G network has gone down in the last year. Or the farmers who cut through this countries internet pipelines. No such a device could be a great backup for Australians.

Not to mention the backward school policy of outright banning smart phones. I can't see them banning this device?

OMG! I'm buying one when I get paid Friday. This is EXACTLY what I have been wanting for several years! In fact, once I get mine and decide that is it indeed perfect, I'll buy several more! Perfect stocking stuffers!

Honestly it intrigues me, and I am definitely interested but I want to see the code released for this. It does allow for lots of interesting hacks, the Gutenberg one being quite good, and I'd like to see what can be done with it.

Services like Wikipanion are worthless if you don't have Internet access. And I don't know any phone or similar device, very much including the iPod touch and the iPhone that claims to have a battery runtime of 90 hours off of two AAA batteries. It will last a year if you're using it for 15 minutes a day; so maybe 2 to 6 months is a bit more genuine. But still, that's pretty amazing.

Besides, I use Wikipedia so often that having a dedicated device makes some sense; it's also a nice thing to have lying around when you're sitting around with friends and want to settle the question of whether Mexico City has 10 or 20 million inhabitants, or how exactly White Wine is made. Having a dedicated device is much less clumsy than using a phone or a netbook.

That said there are downsides, the major one being the lack of images. One update a year seems a bit low, too, ideally there'd be diffs once a month or so. And then there's the question of the interface: Can you search within articles, or are you limited to accessing them by their titles? How long does it take to get to an article? Tom's Guide mentions the lack of a Back button -- WTF! I'd love to see a review to see more of the interface, and to see the battery runtime backed up by an independent source.

Originally posted by mhungry:"could be a good back-to-school gift for young students".

Why? Wikipedia is most certainly NOT (usually) a credible source for collegiate level work, and handing it to a high school student would be horrible training.

The scouts manual is not (usually) a credible source for a bridge engineer, handing it out to your kid would be horrible training!

Unless you're a college major in EVERY field, checking Wikipedia is fine for most of them. And checking Wikipedia is fine for nearly every topic for a high school student. Wikipedia probably contains fewer factual errors than most of what is taught in the class room, and this is not meant as a slight against teachers, it's just human nature.

I'm not so interested in the Wikipedia function, although it's nice enough to have. But since it's open there will be new apps made for it, and what I *am* waiting for is for when it's turned into a simple text or html based e-book reader.

The battery life for phones and more recent PDA's is really pretty pathetic for any long reading session, (Like on a plane.) wheras, if the screen is good enough, this would be perfect. I really hope that someone comes up with a book reading App soon. If they do, I will buy one of these without hesitation.

Hmmm...there may be a big problem for students. In this day and age when even First Graders are doing their homework on computers, it appears this standalone device does not even have a USB port for connectivity. How is someone going to cut and paste any information from this device? And I guess going to external source links is out of the question.

I also notice from the company's Facebook site that there is no rendering of equations either, which make it of dubious value for most math and many science articles.

The lack of specific technical specifications make the claim of 1 year battery life a bit suspicious. Under what duty cycle is this determined?